Amy Mah is a snarky, sarcastic and cynical author who writes of her life as a modern Vampire and whose books can be seen at: www.FangsRule.com or on Amazon her first book is self help guide called: Fangs Rule a girls guide to being a vampire from Reardon Publishing and is available as full colour paperback, Kindle; E Book. Amy also written VAMPIRE where you read of her problems of living her life as a blood chilling denizen of the night. Later this year her book on sexy Demons will be published

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Friday, August 3, 2012

Gods like Ba'al have the best sex parties

Gods
that have the best sex parties

Just
been reading up on Ba'al seams to be a nice storm god so why all the bad press?

He
was never a evil demon just a rain and fertility god ....talk about getting a
bad press when you don’t deserve it

I think it was because he had better sex parties than Yehweh

see how crazy the world is storm god Baal becomes a demon
where as storm god Thor has a name of the week named after him Thursday

Ba‘al Worship in the
Old Testament

The
most prevalent religious system in the immediate Canaanite context of Israelite
culture was the worship of Ba‘al.

A network of mythical stories that
attempted to explain in narrative the nature of the physical world supported
this religious system. As with most myths, the entire story is complex, varying
in details and emphasis between peoples. The basic features, however, are
fairly simple. Ba‘al religion revolved around the cycles of nature necessary
for survival and prosperity in the ancient world, primarily growing crops or
raising livestock, as well as the growth of human populations. Not
surprisingly, in an arid and agriculturally marginal area of the world the
fertility of land and crops played a large role in Canaanite world view.

Also
as expected, water was a major element of the myth and its images. Likewise, in
an environment where human existence was often precarious for a variety of
reasons human fertility was an important concern, not only for survival, but
also due to the fact that people were one of the most important resources.

What
we know of the basic elements of the Ba‘al myth actually comes from two groups
of texts. The Babylonian creation hymn,Enuma
Elish, describes a great battle among the
gods, primarily between Marduk, the champion of the gods, and Tiamat, the
primeval ocean or the "deep." Sometimes Tiamat is portrayed as a
great serpentine beast, the dragon of chaos or the dragon of the sea. Marduk
overcame Tiamat and her forces and after splitting her body into two parts,
made the sky, stars, sun, and moon from one half, and the earth from the other.

From the blood of Tiamat's defeated husband Kingu, one of the lesser gods, Ea
(Enki) then created humanity to be servants of the gods so they would never
have to work again. Marduk continued to bring order into the chaos caused by
Tiamat, setting each of the astral deities in their place in the heavens and
establishing the cycles of nature.

This
theme of a cosmic battle among the gods personifies the struggle for life. It
describes the annual renewal of the earth in springtime; it is a myth of the
cycle of seasons. This cosmic battle was not understood as a historical event
of the past, but occurred anew each year and was reenacted in cultic ritual.
Marduk represents the forces of order, the coming of spring with its renewal of
life and the end of the reign of the chaos and death of winter. Marduk is the
spring sun that gives life and renewed energy to the earth. Tiamat represents
those forces that threaten human existence, the threat of a disordered world in
which springtime never comes. The ancient theme of an original primeval ocean
that threatens to break out and engulf the world in killing salt water is also
seen in Tiamat. Creation, in Babylonian thinking, was an ongoing struggle
between order and chaos, a way of thinking no doubt related to the
uncertainties of life in the ancient world.

The
second group of texts come from Ugarit, in northern Syria. They are chiefly
concerned with the emergence of Ba‘al as the leader of the gods. Basically,
Ba‘al was the storm god, the bringer of rain, and thus fertility, to the land.
There was rivalry among the gods and a struggle erupted between Yamm, the sea,
and Ba‘al, the rain. With the help of his sister Anat, the goddess of war, and
Astarte, the goddess of earth and fertility, Ba‘al defeated Yamm, and his
cohorts, Tannin, the dragon of the sea, and Loran (or Lothan, cf. Isa 27:1),
the serpent with seven heads. The gods began to build a magnificent house for
Ba‘al so that he could be at rest and provide abundant rain for the earth. But
Ba‘al was challenged by Mot (or Mut), the god of death and the underworld. Mot
temporarily triumphed and Ba‘al disappeared into the underworld. Anat and
Shapash, the sun god, found Ba‘al, brought him back to life, and restored him
to his house.

This
series of stories is even more clearly, especially in its details, an agrarian
myth personifying the cycle of rainy and dry seasons of the Middle East. Like theEnuma
Elish, these texts deal with the danger inherent in drought
and ensuing famine. The disappearance of rain in the dry season (Ba‘al’s
descent into the underworld) portended catastrophe if it did not return in the
Spring.

But
this myth is more explicitly concerned with fertility, specifically cast in
terms of human sexuality. Worship of Ba‘al involved imitative magic, the
performance of rituals, including sacred prostitution, which were understood to
bring vitality to Ba‘al in his struggle with Mot. It takes little imagination
to see the connection between the human sexual act and rain watering the earth
to produce fruit. It is interesting to note in passing that the biblical traditions
use these same agrarian images of being fruitful or barren to describe vitality
in human beings.

The
emphasis here is not on the order of the world, but on the necessity of rain.
The needed water cannot be the unrestrained water of flood or the lifeless salt
water of Yamm (the Sea). It must be life-giving rain, falling at the proper
time. Ba‘al is often portrayed as "Rider of the Clouds," and
described in imagery associated with storms and meteorological phenomena,
including clouds, thunder, lightning, and hail. The myth gives assurance of
some stability in the physical world, assisted by humans in their service to
the gods, that would allow continued human existence.

While
we have no surviving Canaanite religious texts, the accounts of Ba‘al worship
in the Old Testament correspond closely to the existing versions of the Ba‘al
myth and what we know of religious practices in surrounding areas. The
influence of this religious system on Israel can hardly be
overestimated. Contrary to how some statements in the biblical traditions are
often understood, the problem that faced Israel through most of its history was
not that the people totally abandoned Yahweh for the worship of Ba‘al. Rather
the problem was syncretism, the blending of Yahweh worship with Ba’al worship.

Yahweh
has been experienced as a God of power, the God who fought Pharaoh, who parted
the ReedSea, who led the
Israelites through the desert, who parted the Jordan, who brought them
into the land by toppling the walls of Jericho and routing the
Canaanite and Philistine armies. This led to the idea that Yahweh, the God of
the patriarchs, was a powerful warrior God, the God of the desert who could be
counted on to march in with his heavenly armies in times of crisis. However, as
the Israelites settled into the land, they encountered the fertility cult of
Ba‘al. They were easily convinced that while Yahweh may be God of the desert
and God of battles and God of power, it was Ba‘al who was in charge of the more
mundane aspects of everyday life, such as rain and crops and livestock.

The
Israelites never abandoned the worship of Yahweh. They simply added the worship
of Ba‘al to their worship of Yahweh (called syncretism). They had one
God for crises and another god for everyday life. The actual worship of Ba‘al
was carried out in terms of imitative magic whereby sexual acts by both male
and female temple prostitutes were understood to arouse Ba‘al who then brought
rain to make Mother Earth fertile (in some forms of the myth, represented by a
female consort, Asherah or Astarte).

When
crops were abundant, Ba‘al was praised and thanked for his abundant rain. It is
in this context that drought had such impact throughout the biblical
traditions. Not only was lack of rain a threat to survival, it was also a sign
that the gods of the Ba‘al myth were unhappy. It is this context that the
"contest" between Elijah and the prophets of Ba’al carries such
significance. The issue is really who controls the rain, Ba‘al or Yahweh.

Hosea
suggests and Jeremiah graphically depicts the debauchery and excesses that
developed in the worship of Ba‘al. Because of the sexual overtones of Ba‘al
worship, it was easy to use the metaphor of adultery or prostitution to
describe the problem that such syncretism raised for Israel. The prophets are
consistent in condemning Ba‘al worship as a sign of being unfaithful to their
covenant relationship with Yahweh. It is also in this context that the idea of
Yahweh being a "jealous" God comes into play (seeGod
as a "jealous" God). The idea here is not an emotional
or arrogant dimension, but rather simply an assertion that if God alone is God,
as theshemain Deuteronomy 6:4 asserts, then they
cannot worship both Yahweh and Ba‘al.

It
is likely in response to the Ba‘al myth that Israelites eventually developed
their profound doctrine of creation. If Yahweh were to be the only God, then he
had to fulfill the role taken by the gods of the Canaanite pantheon. The
primary revelation of God for the Israelites was in the exodus. From this
experience they could easily work backward to understanding that the same God
who created them as a people was the Creator of the world in which they lived.
Or, to express this idea from the opposite perspective, Ba‘al worship was a
denial that God was really the creator and sustainer of the world. It is from
this perspective that many of the names and titles carried by Ba‘al were taken
over and transformed to apply to Yahweh (for example, "rider of the clouds"
in Psalm 68:4). That was simply a theological way for the Israelites to say
that whatever the Canaanites claimed that Ba‘al did, it was actually Yahweh who
did those things (seeSpeaking
the Language of Canaan).

The
Israelites struggled with Ba‘al worship until the time of the exile, especially
in the more agrarian areas of the northern Kingdom of Israel (also due to some
degree to its official establishment as a state religion in the North for a
time during the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, c. 850 BC). However, as Jeremiah
makes clear, it was a recurring problem in the Southern Kingdom as well.
Largely due to Jeremiah’s insistence that the nation would fall because of its
lack of commitment to God exemplified in its dabbling in Ba‘al worship, the
problem faded after the return from exile in 538. While there were traces of it
later, Ba‘al worship was never again the problem that it was prior to the
Exile. The Judaism that emerged after the exile in the reforms of Ezra and
Nehemiah was passionately monotheistic, and has remained so ever since. In
fact, it was partly that passion for monotheism that arose from the purge of
Ba‘al worship from their corporate consciousness that caused Judaism to have
problems accepting Jesus as the Son of God.

For many faithful Jews, that
sounded too much like a return to a polytheistic syncretism. That was one
lesson that they had learned well.

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About Me

Hi my name is Amy, ok my full Vampire name is: Lady Amelia Mistress of the Night Mare but I prefer to shorten mine to Amy Mah (Vampire) or just Amy to my friends. For those who do not know me I should point out that I used to be a feral vamp living in the outside world raised by humans until I was discovered and adopted into Vampire society. In the human world life was very difficult for me, I knew I needed blood but did not know how to get it, all I had was human books and films telling all kinds of stuff that was useless like I can change into a bat, and that is so not true as I tried it and all it does is make you look stupid as you flap your arms up and down! It was while living with humans I started writing my own little journal, recording what it is like being a teenage vampire, want to know more? well I now have two books out: FANGS RULE and VAMPIRE and you can see these at my website www.fangsrule.com